Medieval Art: From the Peace of the Church to the Eve of the Renaissance, 312-1350

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Duckworth, 1912 - Architecture, Gothic - 315 pages
 

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Page 222 - The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, a greater than Solomon is here.
Page 111 - Street, in his book on Spain, describes and illustrates the mosque at Toledo, which he says is known to have been already in existence in 1085, and was practically unaltered when he saw it. It is a square divided into nine small compartments, each one being vaulted with rather intricately ribbed cupolas — " a little vault with intersecting ribs thrown in the most fantastic way across each other and varied in each compartment.
Page 22 - ... modillions, and the walls were probably plastered. The mosaics of the central dome have been destroyed, but there was once a Baptism figured here. "This fact and the discovery of circular walls beneath the middle of the rotunda have suggested that this mausoleum might have served for a Baptistery."* Now our own Bede says that Constantine built a basilica to the Holy Martyr Agnes at the request of his daughter, " and a Baptistery in the same place where his sister Constantia and her daughter were...
Page 144 - ... crowded, many-gabled houses, while outwards the country was so closely set over with fair abbeys and villages that the voice of the bells was heard from church to church as they called to one another throughout the whole of Christendom. Moreover, the ritual had been perfected by the daily practice of a thousand years, and was linked to a music that belonged to it as the blast of trumpets belongs to war. All were parts of a marvellous drama, the ceremonial life of a people.
Page 1 - The knife is in the meat, and the drink is in the horn, and there is revelry in Arthur's hall ; and none may enter therein but the son of a king of a privileged country, or a craftsman bringing his craft.
Page 215 - And opened Heaven from its long interdict, In front of us appeared so truthfully There sculptured in a gracious attitude, He did not seem an image that is silent. One would have sworn that he was saying, "Ave...
Page 141 - ... work, and ivories, their seals, and even the pierced patterns of their shoes should be like little buildings, little tabernacles, little " Paul's windows." Some of their tombs and shrines must have been conceived as little fairy buildings ; they would have liked little angels to hop about them all alive and blow fairy trumpets.
Page 142 - The great cathedrals seem to have been built on such a scale that they might almost gather the entire adult population of the city within their walls. As to these marvellous buildings, the half of their glories and wonder cannot be told. They are more than buildings, more than art, something intangible was built into them with their stones and burnt into their glass. The work of a man, a man may understand ; but these are the work of ages, of nations. All is a consistent development, stone is balanced...
Page vii - Europe, yet very few orijr-'al collections of material for this period are to be found, and it is to be feared that in the majority of cases such records have been destroyed.
Page 178 - ... old glass it holds the sunlight, as it were, within it, so that the whole becomes a mosaic of coloured fire. Up to the middle of the thirteenth century the usual colour scheme was of crimson and azure, cleared by small fragments of white, yellow and green. The " pitch " of the colour is the intensest conceivable, and stimulates the sensibilities like an exultant anthem. One feels that this dazzling mixture of blue and ruby was made use of by a deeper instinct than taste. Such windows seem to...

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